Alfred Allmers is just a bit of a prig, self-conscious like most people with a self-imposed mission in life, and doubtless possessing in full measure the scholar's peevishness. The sister Asta is a woman with an awful secret. She can give her suitor Borgheim no hopes. She loves her brother's child to distraction, and she knows of her mother's dishonour. To Rita she is not altogether sympathetic. She takes from her Eyolf's love, the love he should have bestowed on his mother, and she is evidently held in high intellectual favour by her husband. Naturally Rita, who has lifted up both the Allmers by her wealth, feels all this. She confesses it, too, to her husband. He has become morbid, unmanned, hysterical, since the accident. All his hopes are dashed to earth and shattered. He conceives a horrible fear for his wife. The interview is a prolonged one and intensely painful. It is written with supreme art and conveys volumes in half-uttered sentences. There are no really long speeches, the dialogue being crisp, and while the action is not rapid, three lives' histories are told with consummate art and unabated vigour. Asta has then a scene with her brother. She tells him that she is not his sister; her mother was not all she should have been to his father. Brother and sister face each other, and their parting at the end of the act is another of those strangely affecting climaxes Ibsen builds so well. There is never shown a hint of warmer feelings between the two than their supposed relationship warrants. Eyolf, Eyolf! it is always the spirit of the child that directs the doings of this strange yet ordinary group of human beings. Allmers later suggests suicide to his wife, and the awful contingency is discussed. The tone of Little Eyolf is distinctly optimistic. Hope is preached on every page. Alfred and Rita clasp hands and take up their life work as it lies before them in the squalid village that belongs to them. Asta goes away with Borgheim, leaving a flavour of the mystic behind her. She is a true Ibsen girl. Little Eyolf is the lodestar of Allmers ever after. The play seems on its surface to be a powerful preachment against dilettanteism. Writing a book about Human Responsibility is all well enough, but out in the thick of the fight is a man's place. Assume the responsibilities of common humanity. Do not talk about them. The relations of parents to children are fully exploited, and the lesson read is that parents owe much to each other, quite as much as to their children.